Max Homa came remarkably close to drilling a spectator in the head at The Players Championship. An insane point-of-view video of the narrow-miss is absolutely terrifying.
Fortunately, the golf fan was completely unscathed.
The near-fatal incident took place at the Par-4 14th on Saturday. Homa was one-under for the day heading into the hardest hole on at the Players Championship and quickly saw that number stretch to four-over with a quintuple bogey.
He sent his initial tee shot sailing right into the water. His second attempt was not much better.
It went way right into the trees and landed right on a pile of pine needles.
As is standard, all of the nearby spectators ran over to surround the ball. Most of them gathered behind him, while the others made a path for him to swing back into the fairway.
The path was not wide enough. A fan with his phone out stood directly in front of Homa. I’m not entirely sure how nobody thought to push him back because he was very clearly in the way.
Homa bladed his iron shot, which caused the ball to fly much lower than expected.
POV video posted to TikTok will make you think that the ball hit the cameraman in the head. The crowd reaction would suggest the same.
Fortunately, it did not. The ball flew just over the man’s head and hit a branch behind him.
Yeah, it hit a tree.
— Max Homa
When asked about the nearly tragic sequence of events, Homa said that he tried to get the spectators to move before hitting his shot. They didn’t really listen.
I asked them to back up and they backed up around three or four steps. I was trying to go much higher than that but… I guess I should have asked them to move more but I didn’t know I was going to knife it.
Typically, you ask them to move and it’s like two steps back.
I just think they’re throwing caution to the wind at times with their own safety. I’m glad I did not hit anybody. It was scary.
I was trying to go significantly higher than that.
— Max Homa
Max Homa was in good spirits because the errant shot only resulted in yet another poor lie. Had it gone differently, and the fan did get nailed in the face, this would be a very different conversation…
Golf fans, heed warning!